


Carry Me, But Keep My Feet On the Ground

by farfarawaygirl



Category: Outer Banks - Fandom, Outer Banks - tv
Genre: F/M, Friendship, a little bit of pain, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:53:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfarawaygirl/pseuds/farfarawaygirl
Summary: The declaration of death for John Booker Routledge and Sarah Cameron comes in the second to last week in October. It is an anticlimactic event, Shoup shows up at the restaurant, his face greyer and older than it was at the start of summer. He treats her like she might have a nervous breakdown. Which, all things considered isn’t to far from what happened the last time she spent time sitting across a table from him. The night that JJ disappeared.
Relationships: JJ/love and support
Comments: 19
Kudos: 80





	Carry Me, But Keep My Feet On the Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Teskey Brothers, Hold Me.
> 
> Just an idea, on what could happen next.

The declaration of death for John Booker Routledge and Sarah Cameron comes in the second to last week in October. It is an anticlimactic event, Shoup shows up at the restaurant, his face greyer and older than it was at the start of summer. He treats her like she might have a nervous breakdown. Which, all things considered isn’t to far from what happened the last time she spent time sitting across a table from him. 

“I know they were your friends.”

He’s holding an official looking envelope, dark grey, Kie can see a intricate coat of arms on the return sender section. She feels like her throat is closing up. 

“So, that’s it then? John B’s dead, and you stop that farce of an investigation into Rafe Cameron? He killed Peterkin. He was the last person that anyone saw...” Kie’s voice cracks. She can’t quiet get the name out. “You know he did something to JJ.”

Shoup’s eyes shutter closed. “I promise you I’m trying to find answers.”

Tears are streaming down her face, behind the Sheriff she sees her dad watching. The last time she sat across from Shoup she ended up being sedated by a paramedic, she knows her dad is afraid for her. Afraid of her. Hell, she’s a little afraid of who she’s becoming. She’s afraid if the raw hurt that burned through her when she was told that JJ was missing. When she learned that his bloody shirt was found on Rafe’s boat. She’s lost it at the Sheriff’s office, lashing out like JJ had in that awful tent. 

The night after JJ disappeared haunts her nightmares. Hell, it haunts her during the day too. Their fight. His plan. Her refusal. What they found after he left. 

“That was his bloody shirt on Rafe’s boat deck.”

Shoup nods. “Rafe admits they had an altercation that afternoon. But there is no other evidence...”

Kie cuts him off, “you mean the Cameron’s have covered up an other crime. Just because you can’t find a body...” Kie stops short, suddenly exhausted. She has this dream that JJ is safe, that he’s made it out, maybe to Yucatan. That he is with John B. She just doesn’t know what Rafe did to him before he escaped. 

“I just came by, as a courtesy, to let you know that the Sheriff’s office is releasing the Routledge house as a crime scene. In case you wanted to get anything before the landlord clears it out.” Shoup places the envelope in front of her, the legal documents that make John B a dead man. When he stands up, he pats her shoulder once, awkwardly. 

“Thanks for your service.” Kie is surprised at the venom in her voice. The arrogant distain. Shoup pulls his hand back, nods at her dad and exits. Pulling the collar of her shirt up Kie wipes her tears away, she looks out the window. There is a storm coming. 

-

Two days after the death declaration her mom places a battered envelope on the dining room table, it’s addressed to Kie. She chokes on her food. That is John B’s cramped half cursive. 

“Pen pal?”

Kiara nods, working her throat to get her food down. 

“Can I be excused?”

Her mom’s long suffering sigh is all the reply she waits for, Kie is running up the stairs, slamming her door and sliding down it. 

It is a single piece of paper. She has to reread it twice to understand the words, she’s shaking so hard that the envelope slides to the floor, and Kie is worried that she will rip the paper. 

Kie,

We’re safe. Meet us at Benson point at 10pm on Halloween. 

Bird. 

Kie melts against the door. They’re safe. When her heart stops pounding, Kie stands up. She needs to get to Pope. 

Pope and Topper are sitting on the dock behind his Dad’s shop, there is an empty bag of chips between them, weighed down by a half full water bottle. 

“They’re alive.”

Pope squints up at her, she can tell he and Topper are stoned. Part of the new and unimproved Pope. Lots of school work. Lots of weed. Hanging with a kook. 

Nodding at her, Topper drinks from his own water bottle. “Whose alive?”

“Who do you think, asshole?”

She doesn’t get this new found relationship. It makes so little sense to her, but sometimes, sometimes she thinks that Topper and Pope are both just trying to figure out life on the other side. 

Kie shakes the letter in Pope’s face. 

“That’s John B’s writing.”

“I know!”

“Halloween is tomorrow night.”

“They’re coming home.”

Even Topper looks like this news means something to him. 

“Come on Kie, they can’t come home. They’re fugitives.”

She feels heat spread across her face, down to her collar bones. There is pressure building behind her eyes. 

“Fuck you, Pope.”

Topper laughs. “Chill the hell out, Kie.”

“I thought you cared about Sarah.” There is a bite to her voice, a promise of a storm in the way she’s glowering down at them. 

“Fine. We’ll meet here tomorrow. 8pm.” Topper replies, looking down at his phone. 

From the corner of her eye she looks at Pope. Reclined in the dock, he’s staring up at the sky, impassive. Kie misses the ways things used to be. She misses the way Pope approached a problem. She misses John B and his stupid floppy hair. And, she misses JJ. God, she misses JJ so much it burns in her chest. 

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

-

Kie takes her time. She packs a cooler, all the usuals; snoballs, the particular brand of juice boxes that Pope prefers, JJ favourite shit beer. In an effort to calm her mind she braids her hair. When she finally descends the stairs to leave, her mom looks at her, surprised by Kie leaving after months of self imposed house arrest. 

“You’re going out?” It sounds hopeful.

“I’m going to met Pope, and Topper.”

Kie watches the crease between her brows deepen, and feels a beat of shame deep in her heart. These last two years she’s made her moms life a living hell. Tenderly, hesitantly, she kisses the top of her moms head.

“Don’t wait up!”

By this time tomorrow everything will be back to normal. As normal as anything ever is in the Outer Banks. Starlight is out by the time she pulls up to the docks, carrying her cooler, and backpack with warm clothes Kie tries to imagine seeing them all again. Seeing John B and Sarah. Seeing JJ. 

Topper has his running lights on, Pope is tightening down an extra lamp in the bow of the boat, working in a way that is endearingly familiar to her. He’s fixing a problem. She hands the cooler off and hops down, converse squeaking on the boat deck.

“Let’s go boys.”

It’s different, and at the same time, bizarrely familiar. This routine of pulling out and heading off, but it lacks what she used to love, the colourful commentary, the snarky, smart mouthed wildness of her best friends. 

Soon, Kie thinks. Soon they’ll all be back, and that feeling will be back too. 

It is a calm cool night, the stars are bright, the water not too rough, and Topper turns his music to just the right volume. It’s not it her taste, to mopey white boy, not enough rage or history, but she doesn’t mind. Kie’s heart is working overtime. Beating erratically, she feels like she is vibrating with the need, the unholy want of it all. 

They’re so close. 

She can’t wait. 

Pope must send her restlessness, because he joins her on the leather bench seat, presses his knee into hers. They have not been this close in ages. Since whatever they had burned and failed. She has missed the boy who never left in a way so differently than the gaping hole first John B, then JJ, ripped in her chest. Missing Pope has been this constant irritation at her finger tips. An itching she can’t scratch. 

Impulsively, she takes his hand. 

It takes an hour and and a half to motor to Benson Point, they pass the time mostly in silence. Topper, who has been made reliable only by helping John B and Sarah at the church, is almost alien to Kie. A familiar face from school, and Kook life, but an unknown one. 

He and Pope had bonded over the loss of their friends. John B and JJ, sure, but for Topper, Rafe is gone too. Just in a different way now. 

Whenever Kiara sees Rafe around town, she is filled with rage, but even when she can’t see straight because of him, she can see the ways he’s changed. He’s gaunt. Wound tight. Vacant. 

Ward Cameron May have saved him, but he didn’t do Rafe any favours. 

“How will we find them?” Topper is looking at Pope, that disbelief back on his face. 

“I’m not sure.” The sure dies in Kie’s mouth. There is a green shirt hanging from a tree branch on the far side of the bay, a green and blue tropical shirt, it is lit up by the faintest of flashlights. “There!” She points. 

This shirt, this scrap of fabric makes it all real. 

Pope and Topper make moves, calling out instructions as they get closer, Kie can’t wait, as soon as she thinks she can stand she jumps from the boat. Behind her she hear Pope curse. The boat pushes closer to shore, but’s she already outpacing it, soaked to her shoulders, feet pushing at wet sand as she get closer to the shoreline. 

Topper’s boat bottoms out, the familiar scratch of sand on fibreglass, and then he and Pope are pulling it in, anchoring it down. Kie fumbles onto the sand, regretting leaving her backpack with her headlamp behind. Pope must turn on the extra light he’d attached earlier, because there is suddenly a flood of light on the beach. A circle of gold. 

“John B?”

Please be here. Please be real. 

“Kie!” His voice hits her like a wave. It is pulling her under, tearing at her hair and clothes, sweeping her away. Kiara feels like she should just lie down on the sand, and wait for the pain to subside. But, they’re there. John B and JJ. 

Sarah and John B step out of the shadow. Kie catalogues everything in a few seconds. They are more browned then ever before. Sun kissed and sun bleached. And gloriously real. She launches herself at John B, and thank God he catches her. Pope piles on. It’s a moment of relief unlike anything she has ever know. 

She is crying, there is snot dripping down her face, and she does not even care. Not even when John B grabs her cheeks and kisses her forehead. Not when he cracks her skull into Pope’s from the fierceness of his hold on them. It seems like they are all taking and not making sense, but then, a sliver of what John B is saying breaks through. 

“Where’s JJ?”

Kie was just looking over his shoulder, the same question on her own lips. 

“What?” Her voice is like a crack of thunder on the beach, even Topper and Sarah look up from their awkward hug. “You have JJ. He’s with you. Right?” There’s a feeling of drowning growing in her chest. Her wet clothes are dragging her under. 

John B looks so confused she knows in an instant that JJ is not with him. She knows now what she should have know all along. He’s dead. JJ is dead. The denial she’s held onto all fall is suddenly gone. Abruptly she falls to the sand. 

“You though JJ was going to be here?” It’s Pope, he’s looking down at her, his arms still tight around John B. 

“He said...” she feels lost. 

“What happened to JJ?” 

God, she hates Sarah Cameron. Hates that she says his name. 

“He’s been gone almost as long as you.”

“What?”

Focussing on the top of Sarah blue Ked, Kie listens, humming with sadness, shivering from the chill.

“He disappeared in August.”

John B surges towards Topper, grabbing on the hood of his coat. “What happened to JJ?”

“I had nothing to do with it!” Topper snaps back, batting John B back, face hard. “He is the one who got into it with Barry, and Rafe.”

“He left The Wreck, someone saw him with Rafe... and then be never made it home.”

Kie feels a convulsion of self hatred flow through her. “We knew what it was like, and we let him go home. He stole that damn boat, and we let him go home.”

John B falls to his knees beside her. She knows that look on his face. She’s seen it in the mirror. 

“Either Rafe killed him, or his dad did.” Kie pulls he knees closer. “What kind of people are we? We let him go home! We knew and we didn’t stop it.” Hot tears are sliding down her cheeks. “Your note said we, so I thought he was with you. I thought...”

John B uses his sleeve to wipe her face, his hands are cold on her skin. Hard from work, calloused and rough. Like JJ’s were. 

“He wanted to go look for you, but I wouldn’t. When he disappeared I told myself he had found you.” John B is holding her so tightly that Kie feels her back crack. She feels his tears on her neck. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. 

Sarah urges them up, but they cling together, Pope wrapped around them. It’s familiar and heartbreaking. They need JJ. They stumble in the forest to a small inlet, Kie holds into John B and Pope so tightly with her hands she feels cramps building in them. 

Sarah has a fire built, they inelegantly sit down, her and John B explain a series of events and details that Kie can hardly grasp. She relies on the calculating look on Pope’s face, knows that he at least is listening. Topper and Sarah sit opposite them, not touchingly, not exactly united, but wholly separate from the Pogues who are swimming in grief. 

John B explains a plan he’s working on, Topper and Pope adding ideas and solutions, but Kie silent as she sits squished between Pope and John B. Time passes strangely that night. She knows they talk for hours, and she knows it’s a two hour boat ride home, but it feels like seconds. One minute she is believing JJ will be there, the next, she’s being pried off of John B by Topper as he pulls her back into his boat. And then Pope is driving her car home, leaving her at the door. 

They never drank the beer. 

It’s almost five thirty, Kie is still cold and damp from her over eager plunge into the sea, but all she wants is her mom. She wants to feel safe, and secure. Like she did when it stormed when she was little. For the first time in years she wants to crawl into bed with her parents. 

“Mommy?” 

Her mom stirs, is instantly upright in bed, alarmed eyes on Kie’s face. 

“Kiara?”

Kie throws herself onto her mom, sobbing. This grief is unending. “He’s dead isn’t he?”

She feels her mom shift, pull her down, cover her up. Feels the smooth motion of her mom stroking her back. The soft murmur of soothing words. Kie can’t stop sobbing. Can’t stop the tears. 

“JJ’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, Baby. I think he is.”

Somehow she falls asleep. When she wakes up, it’s noon, and her mom is still there. Still stroking her hair. Kiara pretend to fall back to sleep, but all she can think of is JJ, and his body somewhere in the Atlantic. 

-

By Thanksgiving everything is almost back to normal. John B is returned home, a redeemed hero, Sarah is back at Tanny Hill, Ward and Rafe are in jail on the mainland. It should feel good. It should feel like justice has been served. 

Kie just feels hollow. 

She spends her nights working at The Wreck, or dodging John B and Pope. Topper stops by occasionally, an apologetic slant to his smile. ‘Sorry one of my best friends killed one of yours’. She supposes life might always be like this. 

Unfinished. Unsettled. Unresolved. 

Once she agrees to go with Topper to see John B, now legally emancipated, and living down the block from his old house. A sturdy old house, with blue hurricane blinds. His house is warm, the press of people unrelenting. Kie can’t quiet look at Sarah, all that rage still bubbling in her chest. 

‘Your brother killed JJ, your dad killed Big John.’ The thought rolls around and around in her head until she wants to punch someone. Pope’s out back with Topper smoking a joint, so she just gets up and walks out. 

“When are you going to forgive her?” John B calls after her, his voice is void of any real emotion. 

She doesn’t have an answer, so she keeps on walking. Finds herself outside JJ’s house. The porch light on. This, of all things makes her finally snap. 

Stomping up the steps she pounds on the door until Luke Mayfield opens it, cigarette clutched between his lips. 

“Turn off the damn porch light!” He blinks at her, confused. “He’s not coming home.” Finally he flinches. “I hate you.” Kie is finally letting it out. “I hate you! You stupid, fucking piece of shit!”

Kie blindly strikes out, her open palm slapping his shoulder. 

“He deserved better.”

She’s wiping her tears away, moving backwards down the step. 

“So turn off the fucking porch light, because JJ is never coming home!”

John B and Pope are standing at the end of the drive. Topper and Sarah waiting in his SUV behind them. Kie wrenches open the rear passenger door and pulls herself inside. John B is looking at her. 

“He deserved better. A better dad. And better friends.” It’s silent the whole ride home. Kie knows Sarah is watching her through the rear view mirror. Feels the pressure of her stare, and just is too tired to care. 

-

After her outburst at the JJ’s house, it is easier to breath. Easier to live her life. She goes to school. Works at The Wreck. Watches bad tv with her parents and tries to forgive herself. It’s a day in, day out thing. Some days she remembers to be kind to herself, other days she thinks about taking the ferry to the mainland just to visit Rafe in jail. To see him locked up. 

On December 22nd she wakes up to a ‘happy birthday’ text from Pope. She’s seventeen. 

School is a study in torture. Kie thanks Topper for the lone cupcake he pulls out at lunch. Ignores the watery gaze of Sarah from across the dining hall. It’s the last day before winter break, and everyone is too keyed up to pay attention. John B calls her after school, asks if she wants to take the Pogue out, but she can’t, she has a shift at The Wreck. 

Technically she’s not scheduled. Kie’s just used to the work, needs the physical push to even think about sleeping at night. She stops at the water before she heads to The Wreck, looks out long and hard. Remembers last birthday when JJ made her a pot brownie cake, with really bad icing. They’d eaten it alone, John B working, Pope doing extra credit, and had laid out in the sunroom of the Chateau. 

The dinner rush is finally ending, it’s down to just a few regulars, and some take out orders. Kie is bussing a table when she feels it, this ripple down her spine. Her eyes flick to the door. 

Kie drops the tray she is holding. Half full soda cups, bowls of mostly eaten chowder, baskets of napkins and sundry cutlery clutter to the floor. JJ is standing there. Right there. Ten feet away. That fucking red cap, and his stupid face. His stupid face. 

She finally moves. If it were physically possible, she’d say she flew. Kie is across the distance and in his arms. It’s inelegant, a jumble of elbows and chins crashing into shoulders. But, JJ catches her. Kie uses her legs to half climb him. She is kissing his shoulder, his forehead, his ear. 

Tears are streaming down her face. His too, she notes. JJ’s hands are painful where they dig into her ribs, bony and long and familiar. 

“How are you here? How are you alive?”

JJ tried to pull back, to answer her, but Kie isn’t letting go. She pins him to her chest, her toes skimming the ground. She’s never going to let him go. 

It could be hours, it could be minutes, but her dad comes over, hugs them both. Helps JJ extricate himself. Greedily Kie grabs hold of his hand. She touches his face. His chin. His stupid face. 

“He’s real, right?” There is genuine panic in her voice as she turns to her dad, maybe this is it, maybe she is crazy. 

“He’s real.”

“I’m real.”

JJ uses a napkin, he one handed wipes her face, and it’s so rough and indelicate she knows he’s real. She knows it’s him. 

“I tried your house first. Think I just about gave your mom a heart attack.”

Kie just nods. She has a million questions, and no ability to put them to words. 

“JJ.”

“Kie.”

God, that smile. She missed that smile. 

“You kids should go and visit. Catch up.”

Floating, unable to really process anything Kie blindly follows JJ out. He leads her over to a beat up pick up truck with Florida plates.

“The chateau is boarded up.”

“John B lives down the street now.”

JJ turns the car over, letting it idle. He clears his throat. “Why isn’t Pope here?”

“He’ll be with John B. I think. And Sarah. Maybe Topper.”

JJ’s eyebrows disappear into his hair. 

“How are you alive?”

“Barry.” JJ has them moving down the road, Kie holds his elbow, because she literally doesn’t want to let him go. “I had to make good on some debts.” His eyes are distant. She thinks he means he was smuggling. Frankly, she doesn’t fucking care. He’s home. There is a faint pink line on his face, a healing scar. Kie runs her finger down it. 

“You can’t leave me again.”

He glances at her quickly, just a flash of blue eyes. JJ nods. 

Kie directs him to the right house, it’s bright, lit up with Christmas lights and a faint glow from within. 

“I read about the FBI taking over the case. John B and Sarah. The whole fucking thing.” Kie follows him out the drivers side, still unwilling to let go. 

“I’m sorry.” The words spill out of her. “I’m sorry for everything. For your dad, and for the Phantom. For fighting with you that day. I’m sorry for blaming you for Barry. I should have done something.”

JJ is just looking at her, biting his lip. 

“I should have never put you at risk. That whole fucking stunt with the cash, at Barry’s. I didn’t think it through.”

Kie throws her arms around him again. Holding him in place. Holding herself to him. 

Behind them a porch door opens. 

“JJ?”

That’s John B. Kie feels one of JJ’s arms leave her back, knows he must be reaching out, but before she can think a solid mass is slamming into her back. JJ stumbles backwards. He has just regained his footing when a second impact hits. They half fall, half stumble to the ground. In the pandemonium she feels John B elbow her, Pope blindly kisses her and then moves right on to the next cheek. 

It’s dirty, mud and bracken sticking to then. It’s cold too. December and all that. But it’s the best she has felt in months. Since the night of the Phantom, and the storm. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t call us!”

A cacophony of questions follow, the four of them are still on the ground, a sharp rock digging into Kie’s side. More lights kick on, vaguely Kie is aware that Topper and Sarah are watching them from the porch. Pope is the first to get up, easing John B up beside him, and suddenly Kiara is filled with the irrational fear that someone will try to separate JJ from them, so she ignores John B’s outstretched hand, and struggles her feet without letting go of JJ’s hand. 

JJ looks taller. Can he be taller? Or maybe it’s the light, the way he’s dropped weight, the look in his eyes. 

“You’re alive.” From the porch, Sarah’s voice is strained. Hesitantly, she takes the steps down, and then flings her arms around JJ’s neck. He’s blue eyes shift between Kie and John B, before he pats her back one handed and shifts away. Sarah is crying now. John B slipping an arm around her. “We thought Rafe killed you.”

JJ sucks in a tight breath of air. Nods over their heads, his eyes vacant. “He kicked my ass.” His free hand rises up, and he fingers that pink scar Kiara has watched in the car, “cut me up, but he didn’t kill me. Kinda wished he had because of what happened after, but...”

“Don’t day that!” There is a sharpness in her words, in her heart. “Don’t ever say that.”

JJ watches her, lips tight, eyes tired, and nods once before he turns away. 

Topper clears the air. “I guess you made use of that passport.”

“Thanks.” JJ says, uncharacteristically kind to this kook.

“You knew?” Pope is looking at Topper with unmasked anger in his face. “This whole time you knew he was alive and out there?”

“No. I thought Rafe had killed him.” That heaviness is back. “But I had given my passport the day before to help him get out of town. Rafe and Barry has nothing good planned for him. When the Sheriff found his shirt, I thought it meant he was dead, but I kept my mouth shut, in case he had gotten away.”

Kie is pulled forward by JJ, as he moves towards the steps. Abruptly he offers his hand, Topper blinks, surprised, then shakes it. 

“This place is nicer than the Chateau.” JJ taps a boot against the sturdy wooden steps, whistling as he takes in the fresh paint and still intact screened in porch. “You got any beer, JB?”

Later, if anyone had asked Kie to explain how they had all gotten inside the kitchen, cracked beers and stood around, leaning on counters she could not have recounted. The only thing she was able to hold onto was the warmth from JJ’s hand in hers, the feel of his rough sweater beneath her cheek and the unfamiliar laundry detergent he smelled off. It reminds her oddly of Halloween. When Sarah and John B showed up at the cove. The way time had lost all meaning. 

She can’t even concentrate to what he’s saying, she just watched the movement of his Adam’s apple, and repeats, ‘JJ’s back’, over and over in her head. Once, she looks up and catches Pope’s critical eye on her, but Kie can’t be bothered to investigate, instead turning her face back into his shoulder. Kie counts the beat of his heart. Closes her eyes and focus all of her attention on the rise and fall of his chest. JJ tightens his arm around her. 

“Happy Birthday, Kie.” JJ mumbles into her scalp, his chest moving beneath her cheek, breathe hot on her ear. “I’ll get you a gift soon.”

She doesn’t say it, but she feels it all the ways to her toes, him being home is gift enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Should I write more? I have an idea, it could be an continuation, it could be a world of its own?


End file.
